She proposes “performative rhetoric”as a useful approach to cultural, political conflicts

“In changing her location and interlocutors, al-Obeidi not only remade the event itself, but its possible interpretation and outcome.”

Arabella Lyon, professor of English

University at Buffalo

BUFFALO, N.Y. —Arabella Lyon, PhD, professor of English
and director of the Center for Excellence in Writing at the
University at Buffalo, has received the 2014 Book Award from the
Rhetoric Society of America (RSA) for the best work in rhetorical
study published in 2013.

She received the award for her provocative book,
“Deliberative Acts: Democracy, Rhetoric and Rights”
(Penn State University Press, 2013), which provides an incisive and
detailed analysis of the theoretical premises underlying dominant
Western rhetoric, the art of public discussion.

In “Deliberative Acts,” Lyon, rather
than conceiving of deliberation within the familiar frameworks of
persuasion, identification or procedural democracy, accords a
higher value to speech acts and bodily enactments that constitute
deliberation itself.

An example of such an enactment, she says, took place in 2011
when Libyan lawyer Eman al-Obeidi burst into Tripoli’s Rixos
Hotel to tell the international press corps there that Libyan
troops had kidnapped, beaten and gang-raped her. Her public
statement challenged both the Gaddafi government and the taboo
against discussing sex crimes in Libya.

“In changing her location and interlocutors,” says
Lyon, “al-Obeidi not only remade the event itself, but its
possible interpretation and outcome. She redefined woman’s
shame as Gaddafi’s shame and demanded a different kind of
recognition and relationship than she would have found in the
Libyan legal system.”

Rhetoric is a subject of formal study and a productive civic
practice, and has played a central role in the Western tradition
from ancient times.It aims to improve the capacity of writers or
speakers to inform, persuade or motivate a situated audience to
act.

Because the 21st century is characterized by the often rapid
global circulation of cultures, norms, representations, discourses
and human rights claims, Lyon says the collision of often disparate
ideas provokes conflicts of many kinds.

“Understanding and resolving them,” she says,
“requires us to find new ways, not only of making decisions,
but of understanding the conflicts themselves.

“The example of al-Obeidi’s performative
rhetoric,” she explains, “illustrates how deliberative
theory can be reoriented away from outcomes and toward the
initiating moment of recognition, a moment in which those taking
part in the conversation are positioned in relationship to each
other and so may begin to define their shared world. ”

In approaching human rights not as universals, laws or immutable
concepts, but as agreements among people, Lyon says she conceives
of them as ongoing political and historical projects that can
develop agreed-upon norms through global and cross-cultural
interactions.

The annual RSA award is presented on the basis of a book’s
originality, strength and persuasiveness of argument; readability;
potential to promote rhetoric among scholars from other fields; and
potential to promote the understanding of rhetoric among the
general public.

Of Lyon’s selection, one member of the selection committee
said, “The articulation of performance and performativity is
a welcome intervention into contemporary theories and practices of
deliberation. Lyon’s discussion builds productively off of
the insights of thinkers such as Aristotle, Arendt and Austin to
offer an innovative take on how rights and rhetoric might be
thought anew.

“I was especially pleased (and frankly excited) to see an
engagement of Butler’s theories of identity and agency, the
latter of which deserves more attention in our field,” the
committee member said. “The work is provocative and
innovative, clearly forwarding important conversations in the
field.”

Lyon is co-editor of “Human Rights Rhetoric: Traditions of
Testifying and Witnessing” (Routledge, 2012), with Lester
Olson, and author of “Intentions: Negotiated, Contested and
Ignored” (Penn State University Press, 1998), which won the
1998 W. Ross Winterowd Book Award for the most outstanding book on
composition theory from JAC, the Journal of Rhetoric, Culture
and Politics.

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